Show uses music, words of Civil War
Reprinted from The New London Day, May 17, 1996
By Kristina Dorsey, Day Staff Writer
Copyright 1996, New London Day.
Firsthand accounts of Union soldiers facing the horrors of the battlefield,
stories of politicians and generals bickering, songs written and sung
during the Civil War—these are among the rich, original materials
that have found a second life in a new dramatic musical.
Inspired by diaries, letters and memoirs from the 1800s, playwright
Jack Kyrieleison spent four years creating "Battle Cry of Freedom," which
is debuting at the Goodspeed-at-Chester/Norma Terris Theatre.
"The more I looked into the [original work]," Kyrieleison
said, "it dawned on me I could probably tell the whole story of
the war using music alone and bridging it with these wonderful words
of everyone from Lincoln on down to infantry soldiers."
Kyrieleison created his first theater script with those songs and almost
exclusively with words written by people of the Civil War era. "Battle
Cry of Freedom" will run through June 9 at the Goodspeed Opera House's
second stage, which is dedicated to the development of new musicals.
Kyrieleison has described the show, with its six cast members, as "a
musical epic in miniature." The plots involve a company of touring
actors telling their version of the war 15 years after the conflict ended.
Told in songs and scenes set on the battlefront and on the homefront,
the story follows the North's fight to save the Union and abolish slavery.
Most of the characters are composites—a soldier embodies a number
of soldiers, a nurse speaks the words of Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman.
With writing by Whitman, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Kyrieleison
wasn't tempted to use his own words, acting instead as an editor. He
trimmed a six-page account by Alcott, who spent a half-year as a nurse
in Washington, to three paragraphs.
Kyrieleison was amazed to discover how eloquent the Union soldiers were.
"The North had free public education, which was not the case in
the South. While there were many beautifully written Southern letters,
they tended to be from aristocratic Southerners. I think the illiteracy
rate was [only] 4 percent among adult males in the North, which is amazing.
"Because they had no other way to communicate what they were going
through, the art of letter-writing was the medium they used. They were
all anxious to communicate this stuff either to themselves in their diaries
or to their loved ones. And people saved those letters."
Kyrieleison read a horrific story from one soldier at Antietam who described
watching an injured soldier screaming for someone to end his misery.
A lieutenant did—he shot the dying man. A cannonball then took
off the lieutenant's head.
Kyrieleison came upon the story of President Lincoln attending a performance
in which John Wilkes Booth appeared before the assassination. Booth was
playing the villain, and three times during the play, he walked up to
Lincoln's box, pointed at him and issued a threat from the play.
"Somebody in the party said to [Lincoln], 'Mr. President, it looks
like he meant that for you.' Lincoln says, 'Well, he does look right
smart at me.' It's all there and it happened."
Unedited history
When people, including politicians, write for posterity, a certain self-awareness
tends to creep in, Kyrieleison said. That's not the case with soldiers,
whose writings, less self-conscious, "play very nicely against the
pronouncements of the generals and the politicians."
When generals write their personal thoughts—as Gen. George McClellan
did in letters to his wife—their carefulness tends to disappear.
McClellan, who is the antagonist of the play and one of the few historical
characters to appear, detailed his private thoughts about Lincoln—whom
he called a gorilla, among other things—and the other people he
thought were trying to break him down.
Accompanying the play's dialogue is music from the era. Ron Holgate,
the director, commends Kyrieleison for his selection of songs, which
reflect the progression of the war.
"When you put them in this context—they were written during
the war or became popular during the war—it just has an emotional
resonance that is what you go to the theater for," Holgate said.
Holgate thought he knew all the songs of Stephen Foster, but he discovered
otherwise when he heard the ones used in the show.
"The thing about this music is that if it's done at all, it's generally
done in an archival, museum, let's-preserve-the-flavor [setting]. That's
great," Kyrieleison said.
"But what's overlooked is these guys were writing for the marketplace.
The American music publishing industry basically came of age during the
Civil War, and they were writing this stuff to be sold and to be performed
with performance values. So I thought it was perfect for theater."
Magic lantern
Theater also allows for ways to make a point quickly.
The production, for instance, uses techniques of the magic lantern—projectors
that were popular at the time of the Civil War. In one case, pictures
of newspaper headlines are projected, and the play follows "the
progression of Lincoln from a candidate way down in the corner of a big
field of candidates, to becoming the nominee without a beard, to becoming
the Lincoln we know with a beard. Then you can superimpose that with
a headline that says, 'Lincoln elected! Let the people rejoice!'" Kyrieleison
said.
"This is all done during a song, and in a way, it helps communicate
the sense of almost the cyclone that overtook the country where this
guy came from out of nowhere and in a very short space of time captured
the imagination of the country."
Kyrieleison didn't know that much about the Civil War until he was drawn
in by Ken Burns' series that aired on PBS in 1990. Although "Battle
Cry of Freedom" is his first script, Kyrieleison, who is from Washington,
DC, has long been involved in the theater as an actor.
Kyrieleison felt that the Civil War was ripe for a theatrical presentation. "It
really is like an epic poem," he said. "It's a narrative that's
complete in itself."
Holgate said, "When I started getting involved in it (about a year
ago), I kept finding out that people I've known for a long time are rabid
Civil War fans. I thought the fact it is authentic material from that
time would be very appealing to that kind of person. The trick of the
thing was to make it appealing to everybody."
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A musical "Battle
Cry"
Reprinted from The Hartford Courant, June 1, 1996
By Steve Metcalf, Courant Music Critic
Copyright 1996, The Hartford Courant.
Almost since the moment the papers were signed at Appomattox, the Civil
War has been one of the country's most reliable industries.
Tourism, memorabilia, books, movies, traveling re-enactments—the
country's fascination with the War between the States has produced an
unending flow of goods and services. And that flow has only increased
since Ken Burns' PBS documentary of a few seasons ago.
So it's not so surprising that there should appear in 1996 a musical
show based on that war.
What is somewhat more surprising is that the show's songs would be authentic
period tunes. Hundreds of these songs were written at the time, but few
are remembered today.
The show, "Battle Cry of Freedom," is playing through June
9 at Goodspeed-at-Chester's Norma Terris Theatre. (It's Goodspeed's second
Civil War show: "Shenandoah" had its premiere here at the main
theater more than 20 years ago.)
Like most of the shows staged at the Norma Terris, "Battle Cry" is
a work in progress.
In letters and diaries and other writings of the time, and in more than
two dozen songs, the show evokes the drama and the passion, the horror
and the despair, of this most poignant and personal of wars.
With just six characters, "Battle Cry" is more a historical
compilation than a conventional book musical.
"The music came first," says Jack Kyrieleison, creator and
guiding spirit of the show.
"I started thinking about this idea more than four years ago when
I began to look at some songs from this era. I was struck by how accessible
these melodies still were. A lot of these songs were tremendously popular
at the time, but I regret to say that most have fallen out of favor."
The early 1860s spawned countless tunes that addressed the war explicitly,
and "Battle Cry" includes a lot of these: the ardently patriotic "May
God Save the Union" and "We'll Fight for Uncle Abe," the
bitterly anti-war "All Quiet Along the Potomac," and the novelty
song, "Grafted Into the Army."
Kyrieleison's show takes its title from [George F.] Root's stirring
1862 anthem, "Battle Cry of Freedom," with its chorus proclaiming, "The
Union forever, hurrah, boys hurrah!"
"Naturally Root's work became very important to me," says
Kyrieleison. "And I was astonished not long ago when I was at a
softball game my son was playing in. And I was talking to one of the
other fathers about this Civil War show I was putting together, and he
said, 'Oh, my wife's great-grandfather wrote some war music. I don't
know if you've heard of him—George Root?' I just about fell over."
The one composer of the period whose tunes tend to still be in active
currency is, of course, Stephen Collins Foster.
Foster's career was in decline by the time war broke out in 1861, but
his melodies certainly helped furnish a musical backdrop to the struggle. "Battle
Cry" uses such lesser-known Foster examples as "Oh Comrades,
Fill No Glass for Me," but it also features the still-fondly recalled "Beautiful
Dreamer," one of Foster's last songs, written months before his
death in 1864.
To adapt and arrange these songs for the theater was a task that fell
to Michael O'Flaherty, the Goodspeed's resident music director.
O'Flaherty set the tunes for various combinations of the six voices,
plus a pit band of trumpet/flugelhorn, violin, guitar/banjo, drums and
a conductor who plays piano and—this being modern musical theater—a
bit of synthesizer.
"It was a fine line getting the sound right," says O'Flaherty,
who spent more than 400 hours on the project. "In a lot of cases
there wasn't much to work with other than a vocal line and a crude piano
part that was often very corny. So we pushed the envelope a little bit
with some of the harmonies and sounds, but we've also tried to preserve
the original flavor and character of these pieces. These songs had to
work not just as ditties around the piano, but as true theater songs."
O'Flaherty admits that when he was first approached to do the arrangements,
he was skeptical.
"I thought, oh, all that stuff sounds the same. But I have fallen
in love with this music. It's really very rich, beautiful stuff."
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Goodspeed likes
patrons who talk back
Excerpted from The Hartford Courant, May 31, 1996
By Claudia Van Nes
Copyright 1996, The Hartford Courant.
CHESTER —"Did you change the lyrics to 'Marching Through
Georgia' so you wouldn't offend Southerners?" a woman in the audience
asked Jack Kyrieleison after the curtain fell on "Battle Cry of
Freedom," a musical created by Kyrieleison and being staged for
four weeks at the Goodspeed at Chester.
No, Kyrieleison said, he had not fooled with that Civil War song nor
any of the other 20 or so numbers that the nimble cast of six sang and
danced through the musical.
About 80 audience members remained in their seats after the performance
a week ago Thursday beyond the echo of the last applause to talk with
Kyrieleison and the director, choreographer, set designer, cast members
and others involved in staging the musical.
It was a chance to answer the kind of nagging questions people have
after a movie or play: Why did that character say this? Why didn't you
include more background? I'm confused about what happened after so-and-so
fell off his horse.
At the Goodspeed at Chester, those questions are welcome, as are criticisms
and even personal remarks.
"My grandson and his class are coming to see this play," a
woman with a Southern accent said from a third-row seat, "and I'm
not sure they're going to get much of the Southern viewpoint. I'm a little
concerned."
"They'll have a lot to discuss with their teacher later, won't
they?" director Ron Holgate replied.
People who see the June 6 production of "Battle Cry of Freedom" will
also get a chance to stay afterward and talk it over with the people
who staged it. The discussion could be seen as an added treat after an
evening at the theater, but the folks who run Goodspeed at Chester also
consider it a necessity.
The original musicals staged at the 200-seat theater, which was once
a turn-of-the-century knitting needle factory, are works in progress
and the weekly "talk backs" help mold the productions.
Aside from being a part of this creative process, talk backers could
be witnesses to a future Broadway hit that they can say they had a part
in shaping.
Because the musical is really a working model for a hoped-for, full-scale
production, there are only six actors playing all the many parts in "Battle
Cry of Freedom," a small orchestra in a scaled-down pit and an effective
but not technically dazzling set.
The daring reach is there, however. This musical, which depicts the
heart-rending struggles of the Civil War from its inception through Lincoln's
assassination, takes its dialogue from existing letters, diaries, speeches,
books and memoirs. The words of Abraham Lincoln, Louisa May Alcott, Frederick
Douglass, Walt Whitman and many more are used, as are the songs of Stephen
Foster and others.
"Finding the songs was the easiest part, because the Civil War
produced a lot of music," Kyrieleison told the audience.
Not so easy was dramatizing that war without casting Lincoln in a part.
"It was very, very clever leaving Lincoln out," was one of
many favorable comments from the audience.
Kyrieleison talked about the creative struggle he had working this bit
out and credited his wife with coming up with the use of John Hay in
the President's stead.
As the talk-back audience filed out into the lobby and to their cars,
they were still talking.
"Fabulous. Makes you wonder what they could do with a cast twice
that size," said a voice from the dark parking lot.
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